Clarity Archives - Page 7 of 9

My Heart: The Practical Value of Knowing What You Want

June 22, 2016 by Joycelyn Campbell Leave a Comment

I teach a course called What Do You Want? that’s based on a process I developed to help me create a more consistently satisfying and meaningful life. It didn’t become part of my program curriculum until I recognized that without knowing what they really want my clients can’t make effective use of the tools I teach them.

The purpose of the course is to identify what I call Big Picture Wants. There’s a psychological term for this, higher order wants, but the concept seems to be a well-kept secret. I do a lot of reading and researching in this area, and I didn’t come across a reference to higher order wants until after I started teaching the What Do You Want? course.

There’s a belief out there in the world that it’s OK—even necessary—to get your needs met, but getting what you want is optional. (Do you really need it or is it just something you want?) It may seem as if trying to get a need met or satisfied is less self-centered or narcissistic than pursuing something you want, but that isn’t the case. It’s simply more underhanded, and it actually keeps your attention focused on you.

There aren’t that many things we need from a survival standpoint: food, water, shelter, and social connections cover most of them. Nearly everything else is optional.

But, as David DiSalvo says, “We have a big brain capable of greatness,” so we’re not satisfied with merely surviving. We want more. We’re actually wired to want more. But we can go either way with that. System 1, the unconscious part of the brain that runs us most of the time, is focused on the short-term, on immediate gratification, on feeling good. System 2, the conscious part of the brain is focused on the long-term, on the bigger picture, on plans, goals, and dreams.

If we don’t know what we really want—meaning what leads to a satisfying and meaningful life as we define it—we’re likely to succumb to what feels good or what’s easiest in the moment. What we’re chasing over the long-term has to be compelling enough to keep us focused and not susceptible to immediate gratification.

I’ve never been clearer about how important this is than I am right now.

Roadwork Ahead

This past December I developed a process for reassessing and prioritizing my own Big Picture Wants for 2016. As I went through the exercises, I realized that one of them—vitality—was a keystone for the others. I want vitality for its own sake, but vitality also positively impacts every one of my other BPWs. Being aware of how important vitality is to me allows me to focus more attention on it, which has a cascade effect on the rest of them.

Armed with this awareness, I set out in January to increase my level of physical exercise and pay more attention to what I eat. And through the first six weeks of the year, I felt fantastic—full of vitality and very productive, focused, and energetic. Then came the crash.

I had an incident while I was using the treadmill one day in February that was somewhat alarming but didn’t stop me from completing my workout. I had a similar, though milder, incident the following day. But the next time I used the treadmill, everything felt normal. About a week after that, I started having chest congestion and trouble breathing. I’d been having some sinus congestion on and off, so I thought the chest congestion was related. I kept up most of my scheduled activities, but it became more and more difficult to do that. I facilitated a four-hour workshop the last Saturday in February and had to have someone else carry my materials from my car into the building.

The following Monday, a friend took me to the ER, where over the course of the day and numerous tests, it was determined that I was in heart failure as a result of undiagnosed mitral valve stenosis and atrial fibrillation and/or flutter. I was transferred to another hospital where I remained for the next seven days.

Three cardiologists are convinced I had rheumatic fever as a child, which is the usual cause of mitral valve stenosis. My general cardiologist claims it is “remarkable” I had no symptoms prior to February because the stenosis is moderately severe.

Lost and Found

This was definitely a life-changing experience, but primarily because I was quite aware I had lost—at least temporarily and possibly permanently—the thing that mattered most to me. Shortly after leaving the hospital, I resumed walking every day, but it was a slog and I wasn’t clear why. I kept up most of my activities but I tired much more easily and although I enjoyed facilitating my classes as much as ever, life was not nearly as invigorating as it had been before.

Then my general cardiologist decided that all of my EKG results indicated I had an atrial flutter, not fibrillation. He referred me to a heart rhythm specialist to be evaluated for a catheter ablation, a procedure that had the potential for eliminating the atrial flutter by destroying the parts of the heart that are causing it. The rhythm specialist explained that my heart was beating 240 times per minute, but due to a conversion (2:1) within the electrical circuit, my pulse measured 120. It was 120 when I was sleeping and 120 when I was exerting myself. It never changed, which was why I was having so much difficulty walking and why I was so tired.

The day the procedure was supposed to happen, it was discovered that my flutter is on the left side (atypical) rather than the right side, so I didn’t get the ablation. Instead they did cardioversion to shock my heart into a normal rhythm. That almost always works but it’s temporary (5 minutes, 5 weeks, 5 years…you never know). So I was put on a medication to maintain the normal rhythm.

It took a few days after this procedure for me to notice the difference. My pulse rate was back to increasing and decreasing the way it’s supposed to. Walking suddenly became much easier and much more enjoyable. Within a few more days I was back to walking at my usual pace for the usual amount of time. And I had energy. I had focus. I had enthusiasm. My vitality was back!

Having had it, lost it, and regained it confirmed its value and importance to me. It’s what I want. It’s what I really want. I now have numerous inconvenient dietary restrictions, which means I have to spend more time preparing my own meals, but if I do that I’m more likely to maintain vitality. I’ve recently been cleared for any and all forms of exercise, which I enjoy doing anyway, but if I do them regularly I’m more likely to maintain vitality. I have way too many medical appointments (11 this month) that eat up a lot of time. But being monitored is something that can help me keep on the right track and maintain vitality.

So I don’t have any internal dialogue about whether or not I’m going to do any of these things because I’m very clear what doing them gets me. I don’t do them because I’m “supposed to” or “have to.” And no will power is involved. I’m not remotely tempted to slack off because vitality is much more compelling to me than any short-term gratification. That simplifies decision-making and makes doing what I need to do easy. (I wrote this post before the major disruption, so there’s some irony in what followed. But my attitude hasn’t changed.)

That’s really the point of identifying Big Picture Wants. When you know what you really want—and you know what it takes to get it—the path ahead is clear. You don’t need to motivate yourself or talk yourself into doing those things because why wouldn’t you do them?

~

At the moment, my heart is in a normal rhythm and my heart failure is “well under control.” At some point there will need to be an intervention in regard to the mitral valve, but I don’t have another appointment with the valve specialist for six months. And I’m now down from three cardiologists to two. As Dr. S said the last time I saw him, “Who needs three cardiologists? You’re not that sick.” Cue the theme from “Rocky.”

Counterfactual Thinking: The World of What Might Have Been

June 15, 2016 by Joycelyn Campbell Leave a Comment

Counterfactual thinking is thinking that runs counter to the facts. It consists of imagining outcomes other than the ones that occurred: the way things could have been—or should have been—different from the way they turned out. Being able to imagine different outcomes is an enormous evolutionary and practical advantage. It’s critical in regard to being creative or inventive and in not continuing to make the same mistakes over and over again. But there are different ways of using counterfactual thinking, some of which are effective and some of which are not.

Nonfunctional or Functional?

Nonfunctional counterfactual thinking frequently leads to blame (of self or others), and if carried on long enough, to rumination, stress, anxiety, and depression, as well as to conspiracy theories and alternate versions of reality.

Functional counterfactual thinking is an honest attempt to examine a situation to determine what, if anything, could have been done differently to create a different outcome. It doesn’t involve blame, rumination, or the twisting of facts.

Upward or Downward?

Upward counterfactual thinking focuses on how things could have turned out better, while downward counterfactual thinking focuses on how things could have turned out worse. Focusing on how things could have gone worse tends to make people feel better. You might think this is a good strategy, but it’s a short-term solution that can contribute to long-term difficulties because it decreases the impetus to change.

That’s because focusing on how things could have gone worse prevents people from identifying actual problems that need to be solved or behaviors that need to be modified. Sometimes it’s only a matter of dumb luck that things didn’t turn out worse than they did.

Evidence vs. Information

Perhaps the biggest difference between nonfunctional and functional counterfactual thinking is that in the former case, the events or actions leading to an outcome are perceived as evidence to support a particular agenda, while in the latter case, the events or actions leading to an outcome are perceived as information to be examined without regard to an agenda. (You can read about feedback loops for a more in-depth treatment of evidence vs. information.)

If you are dissatisfied with a particular outcome, the most useful thing you can do is use counterfactual thinking functionally by attempting to determine what led to the outcome and what, if any, changes you could make to be more effective in similar situations in the future.

Analyzing a situation and identifying what you want to change and why you want to change it uses System 2 (conscious) attention, which is why it isn’t always the go-to response. But if you want to use your brain instead of letting your brain use you, and if you want to be a creative rather than a reactive force in your own life, you will sometimes need to do what doesn’t come naturally.

Uncertainty: Learning to Live with Butterflies

January 22, 2016 by Joycelyn Campbell Leave a Comment

The unconscious part of our brain abhors ambiguity and uncertainty. And patience is not its middle name. That’s unfortunate.

We work to eliminate as much uncertainty as we can as quickly as possible. But when we eliminate uncertainty, we necessarily eliminate novelty. And novelty is the starting point for creation and innovation. In eliminating uncertainty, we kill our shot at brilliance. We become derivative. All in the name of not having to learn to live with butterflies. —Jonathan Fields

In our haste to return to the illusory state of certainty, we tend to do things like jump to conclusions, accept the first answer or explanation that comes to mind (consistent with our mental model), act prematurely, or immobilize ourselves in endless rounds of rumination. (Rumination feels like problem-solving but it’s the opposite: problem-prolonging, if you will.)

By refusing to allow ourselves to simply observe the discomfort that accompanies ambiguity and uncertainty, we often deny ourselves another experience: the pure joy of the aha! moment when a solution presents itself. That may take an hour or several days—or even longer—but suddenly what was murky and inchoate becomes bright and clear. The path ahead becomes obvious.

I say the solution “presents itself” because although we tend to take credit for coming up with the brilliant idea or flash of insight, the part of our brain we identify with had little to do with it. It’s the unconscious that figured it out and then clued us in.

It’s interesting that the unconscious is equally capable of jumping to quick conclusions and of wrestling with an issue long after we’ve depleted our conscious capacity to think about it. In situations where a wrong conclusion isn’t likely to make a huge difference, jumping to one is probably more efficient. But when the issue or problem or project is bigger, it’s worth letting the unconscious mull it over for a while.

One of the reasons waiting this process out makes us squirm is that we have no control over it. It isn’t going to occur by the force of our will or on our timetable. When we try to make it happen we usually just end up getting in our own way and muddling the process.

Certainty Is Not Clarity

Although we frequently use the terms interchangeably, certainty is not a synonym for clarity.

Certainty itself is an emotional state, not an intellectual one. To create a feeling of certainty, the brain must filter out far more information than it processes. In other words, the more certain you feel, the more likely you are wrong. –Steven Stosny, Ph.D.

There’s a big difference between being unclear—not knowing which step to take—and being uncertain—not knowing what the outcome of taking that step will be. It’s important to distinguish between the two and to be able to recognize whether it’s a lack of clarity or the fear of uncertainty that’s getting in the way.

Certainty is an illusion—a somewhat comforting illusion, but an illusion nevertheless. There’s no way to predict the future, and randomness plays a much bigger role in our lives than we want to believe. So if we wait until we are certain of the outcome of our actions, we’ll never act because the outcome can never be certain. There are no guarantees in life.

The best laid schemes of mice and men often go awry. —Robert Burns

Clarity, unlike certainty, is not an emotional state. It’s a state of mind: unclouded, unobstructed, unambiguous. Clarity isn’t arrived at via a tortuous route. Unfortunately, since the unconscious part of our brain is biased against uncertainty, we are biased against it, too. This is another example of our brain using us instead of the other way around.

What you can do:

Practice tolerating uncertainty and not being attached to the outcome by adopting an attitude of curiosity.
Learn to distinguish between being unclear (not knowing which step to take) and being uncertain (not knowing what the outcome of taking that step will be).

It isn’t easy, but rather than trying to get back to comfortable and certain as quickly as possible, we can develop a tolerance for the discomfort. We can even learn to appreciate the uncertainty and the opportunity it presents for novelty. Whatever is on the other side of our current distress may be unimaginable to us now, but it could be brilliant. Why take the chance of missing out on something brilliant just to avoid feeling a little uncomfortable?

Additional reading: 12 Signs that You Lack Clarity

2016: The Year of Clearing Space?

January 1, 2016 by Joycelyn Campbell 2 Comments

You can’t reach for the stars by climbing that mountain of clutter.

That’s what I wrote two years ago (2014: Time to Start Shoveling?) and I stand by it today. There are plenty of obstacles you’ll encounter in your life that you have no control over.

Clutter is a major obstacle, but it’s one you can do something about.

In fact successfully dealing with clutter, if it’s an issue for you, can actually boost your ability to deal with those other obstacles.

Not sure if clutter’s an issue? Here are some questions to ask yourself.

How much stuff are you holding onto because you might need it someday?
How much stuff are you holding onto because it has financial value or “might be” valuable?
How much stuff are you holding onto because it has sentimental value? Just how much of your past are you curating?
How much stuff are you holding onto simply because it’s already there?
How much stuff might you be holding onto that you don’t even know you have?
How many items of clothing or pairs of shoes do you have that you no longer wear—or that don’t even belong to you?
How many drawers, cabinets, closets, countertops, and shelves are so full you can’t fit anything else in or on them?
How much work do you have to do before you can clean your living or work space?
How much time do you spend looking for things?
Have you ever failed to respond to something in a timely manner because you lost track of the paperwork?
How much of your stuff needs to be repaired, refinished, repurposed, or recycled?
How often do you notice something in your living or work space and think “I really need to do something about that”?
Have you ever panicked at the thought of someone coming into your home and seeing the mess?
Conversely, have you ever said, “You think your place is bad, you should see mine”?
How many times have you gotten everything in one area completely tidy and organized only to find the clutter slowly creeping back months, weeks, or even days later?

My interest in clutter and having too much stuff (the two often go together) is related to the effect hey have on the brain. Clutter tends to snag your attention on a regular basis and in dozens of different ways. You don’t have an unlimited amount of System 2 (conscious) attention. How much of it are you letting your stuff siphon off? Wouldn’t you rather use your System 2 attention for something more productive or at least more interesting?

Having so much stuff that every space or place is filled or overflowing can have another dampening effect by keeping you stuck instead of allowing you to move on and explore other interests. Have you ever decided not to take up a new hobby, for example, because you have no space for the materials or the activity due to the fact that you’re storing a bunch of stuff you no longer use?

Clutter falls into different categories: physical/material, mental, emotional, and the hodgepodge of things left undone and/or not being attended to. But all of it has the same effect. So whatever it is:

Clean it out
Fix it
Address it
Replace it
Finish it
Toss it out

The best thing you can do for yourself in 2016 is to make it The Year of Clearing Space. You have no idea what you’ll be able to see once you get all that clutter out of your way.

Freedom from Choice

November 6, 2015 by Joycelyn Campbell 3 Comments

You always have a choice. At least that’s what many people believe. No matter what happens, you can choose how to respond. And if you want things to be different, all you have to do is make different choices.

It’s a highly appealing belief to hold, yet you may have found that making a different choice is often tantalizingly out of reach, even when you know exactly what you want to do differently. So what’s going on? If you don’t make a different choice, does that mean you really don’t want to? Does it mean you lack self-control or will power? Does it mean you’re trying to sabotage yourself?

If you believe that you could make a different choice but don’t, why don’t you?

When you fail to make a different choice, you’re forced to explain yourself—at least to yourself. The result is often the beginning of a vicious cycle of rationalization, excuse-making, or self-blame that can drag on for years or even decades. This is a waste of time and totally counterproductive to changing behavior.

The more we discover about the circuitry of the brain, the more the answers tip away from accusations of indulgence, lack of motivation, and poor discipline—and move toward the details of the biology. —David Eagleman, Incognito

The truth is that you don’t always have a choice. In fact, you rarely have a choice. You keep doing the same things you’ve always done because that’s how your brain is wired. It conserves precious energy by turning as many behaviors as possible into routines and habits. Once those routines and habits are in place, they’re extremely difficult to disrupt. When faced with a familiar situation, you will most likely do what you’ve always done in that situation, even if you want to do something else.

Minute by minute, second by second, the unconscious part of your brain is absorbing and processing an unbelievable amount of data, all but a small fraction of which you’re not consciously aware of. So at the moment you’re faced with that familiar situation, your unconscious has picked up on signals, made connections, and initiated the usual response all before you can consciously consider doing something different. When it comes to routines and habits, consciousness is simply no match for the speed and anticipatory responses of the unconscious brain.

Letting Go of the Illusion

It’s hard to give up our illusions about choice. We want to keep our options open instead of locking ourselves in. We want to be spontaneous. And we prefer to believe we’re exercising conscious choice, no matter how ineffective or detrimental those choices may be. As a result, we often refuse to make a commitment, even to something we really want or that really matters to us.

We repeatedly put far more trust than is warranted in our conscious brain’s ability to override our unconscious brain’s programming. We’re convinced that next time we’ll do things differently.

The reality is that keeping our options open really means leaving the outcome to chance. Yes, there’s a slim possibility that when the moment comes we’ll make a different choice. But the odds are not on our side. The unconscious operates automatically and at a much faster speed than the conscious part of our brain.

When we blame our inability to effect change in our lives on a lack of self-control or will power, our only option is to work on developing those mental muscles. That can be done, to a limited extent, but the source of the problem is not the lack of self-control and will power but our reliance them.

The situation is not hopeless, however. We’re not entirely at the mercy of the unconscious part of our brain. We do have a say in the matter. We can learn how to use both parts of our brain to our advantage instead of letting the unconscious have its way all the time.

But that requires changing the way we think about choice.

The concepts of freedom and choice seem to belong side by side. After all, what is freedom if not freedom to choose? The idea that we could be free, experience freedom, without also having and exercising the ability to choose is difficult to contemplate.

But Krishnamurti believed otherwise.

We think that through choice we are free, but choice exists only when the mind is confused. There is no choice when the mind is clear. When you see things very clearly without any distortion, without any illusions, then there is no choice. A mind that is choiceless is a free mind, but a mind that chooses and therefore establishes a series of conflicts and contradictions is never free because it is in itself confused, divided, broken up.

Decide Now so You Won’t Have to Choose Later

Changing behavior requires that you do something different ahead of time instead of counting on doing something different in the moment. Determine how you want to respond in a familiar situation when you have some distance from it and can think clearly about it instead of when you’re in that situation. And then make a pre-commitment. A pre-commitment eliminates the need to make a choice in the moment because you’ve already decided what you’re going to do.

Formulate a clear and specific intention.
Come up with a way to keep your attention focused on your intention.
Assume you won’t be perfect out of the gate. Your unconscious brain is stubborn and set in its ways. With perseverance, however, your desired response will become the automatic one.

By giving up your so-called freedom of choice, you greatly increase the likelihood you’ll do what you’ve decided you want to do in order to have the life you want to have.